photo by Orenda Randuch

Resetting Redwoods

A century and a half ago, as California’s economy expanded, settlers and industrialists began moving into the Santa Cruz Mountains and deciding what the redwood forests were for. Imagine seeing for the first time the dense understory of sky-scraping titans shading young redwoods in a diverse community that nourished wildlife and cooled creeks teeming with Coho-salmon. Navigating the untouched forest proved difficult and dangerous, but within the forests’ intricate ecosystem these newcomers also saw the potential to use the forest to grow cities like San Francisco and to establish new businesses, institutions, and more.

In an act of hubris, they forcibly carved roads into hillsides that gave their equipment access to each tree and stream, disrupting what had been thriving for thousands of millennia. Today, giant stumps, evenly-aged forests, and Coho-less creeks are the familiar scars of the once decimated forests. These crossings and structures continue to redirect water and sediment today; a large reason why in many places, protection alone cannot undo that damage. Restoring impacted forests begins by removing infrastructure designed for short-term extraction in mind.

Thanks to you, we steward more than 12,000 acres of protected land that we work to restore to nature for all of us.

Take a peek behind the trees at how you have helped the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz mountains–some of the most biodiverse and threatened on Earth–return to nature this year.

Removing Roads Less Traveled

While not all of the forests we protect have unsafe buildings and materials on them, nearly all of them have roads. Many were designed for short-term industrial uses rather than long-term stability on steep terrain. Some continue to provide necessary access to the forest for stewardship, wildlife monitoring, and emergency crews like firefighters. But unmaintained roads can add to the erosion of mountainsides, fragile after the CZU Fire and the extreme winter storms that followed.

With fewer plants to help hold soil in place, dirt roads can wash out, taking away the soil the recovering forest needs, and muddying critical water sources we and wildlife need. With your support, we were able to “rock” crucial access roads—establishing beds of crushed gravel—and decommission unnecessary roads to reduce soil erosion, improve water quality, and give the space back to the forest.

See Orenda Randuch’s photos before and after the removal of an unused road at the Lompico Headwaters you protected in 2006.

Rooting Out Invasive Species

Infrastructure isn’t the only thing humans brought into the redwoods. As people across the country and globe came to the Santa Cruz mountains, plants and creatures came with them. Invasive plants like French, Scotch, and Italian broom took root in places without pests and pathogens equipped to naturally keep them in check. A single plant, such as old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba), can quickly cover ground in the forest and strangle redwood trees. Invasive plants can be a double-edged sword to the heart of the forest as they go up the canopy. Not only can they grow quickly without natural checks—crowding out the native plants the redwood forest and its creatures rely upon—they are also less fire-resilient—making their big growth a big pile of fuel for a wildfire.

A seemingly harmless sounding species, periwinkle (Vinca major), is particularly difficult to remove because any root left in the soil will regenerate into new plants. Thanks to you, invasive periwinkle and French broom removal projects began in the summer of 2024 in the redwood forest you protected at Lompico Headwaters. In 2025 and beyond, the work has continued as a returning project so native plants can re-establish themselves on the forest floor. Your support allows us to remove invasive plants, their deep roots and copious seeds, so these invaded patches do not become a persistent source of dry, flashy fuel in the hotter, drier years predicted to come.

See our Stewardship Team's photos before and after work to remove a patch of periwinkle from the forest by hand.

Returning Redwoods to Nature and Resilience

The truth is: redwood forests still bear the scars of a history marked by profoundly destructive human intervention. They have endured axes and bulldozers, but also lingering barriers like dams, buildings, and invasive species. What has changed is how we act now. Stewardship, for us, is the ongoing work of carefully and humbly understanding how to support forests toward what they once were, and what they still have the potential to become.

Protecting our last remaining redwood forests from further development is a crucial first step. By reducing human impacts left on the land, natural systems regain the capacity to respond, adapt, and recover. Together, we will continue to anchor broader efforts to renew watersheds, support resilient forests, and accelerate the collective well-being of ecosystems that redwoods are capable of achieving. With your help, our forests will be resilient and strong, able to support wildlife, clean water, fresh air, cooler temperatures, and healthy communities for generations to come.

The post A Stewardship Story: Return to Nature appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

map by Ben Pease at PeasePress.com

California is full of redwood forests that have been changed by people with varied motivations. For thousands
of years, Indigenous tribes harvested plants and lit fires to thin the greenery in the understory of the mostly fire-resilient redwoods, gently coaxing the forests to meet their needs for food, medicine, and shelter. With European settlement and the forced removal of Indigenous people came clear-cut logging, first with handsaws and horses and later with powerful chain saws and destructive earthmovers. The settlers also took the view that all wildfires should be extinguished, largely to protect their lumber^{see footnote number 2}.

Clear-cutting arrived in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 19th century, accelerating in the 20th century as the population of Northern California grew, creating demand for lumber as fuel, railroad track, and building material, especially as San Francisco rebuilt itself following the 1906 earthquake. By the 1920s, most of the biggest redwood trees were gone from these mountains, leaving behind armies of stumps. Regardless, a handful of lumber companies eked out a business cutting the region’s smaller trees, as well as managing redwoods with the intent to log them. At the time, people had been so successful at dousing wildfire that the last major one to burn the Santa Cruz Mountains was in 1884^{see footnote number 3}.

Sempervirens Fund purchased one of these heavily altered properties, called Redtree 236, in 2010. The redwoods were crowded shoulder-to-shoulder, on dirt eerily devoid of branches or fallen trunks. The forest “looked kind of artificial,” recalls Holderman. The former owners were “basically growing the trees like crops.” The land trust brought in consulting ecologists, soil experts, and foresters, including Nadia Hamey, to determine whether such a forest could be restored to a thriving ecosystem that supports thousands of other species. “We basically decided to try to figure out, how do you transition an industrial forest into an oldgrowth redwood forest?” Holderman says.

He was unsurprised by the consultants’ prescribed doses of selective logging as part of that solution. And he supported it. Many of his colleagues did not feel similarly. “I got a lot of blowback,” he remembers, bursting into deep guffaws. “Maybe a quarter of my board wanted to fire me.” The controversy was rooted in their belief that environmental stewardship meant letting nature heal itself and that over time, nature would sort it out. In this view, cutting trees was antithetical to conservation.

“Our argument was, ‘well, this is artificial,’” Holderman says. There was no way to know if an industrial forest would evolve into an old-growth forest, a process that can take millennia, but, he told doubters, “We know if we do this [active restoration], it’ll put this on a path to get there quicker.” So in 2011, Sempervirens began for the first time in its 125-year history to experiment with active restoration, cutting some trees to encourage others to thrive, and leaving felled trees on the ground to help restore the soil’s out-of-whack chemistry. Years of removal of fallen snags and old growth by the previous owner had left the soil nutrient poor. Sempervirens began felling trees with chain saws and moving them to modify a redwood forest for the benefit of the forest. “How you manage a forest to restore it, versus how you manage it to produce maximum commercial value, [these] have some overlapping similarities,” says Sara Barth, Sempervirens Fund’s current executive director, “but the end goals are quite different.”

Forester Nadia Hamey marks trees with blue paint she wants cut down. Here, in San Vicente Redwoods’ Deadman Gulch she encourages growth in the biggest oldest trees by felling nearby trees competing for resources.
photo by Orenda Randuch

Nadia Hamey was hired by Sempervirens and POST in 2011 to actively manage San Vicente Redwoods. She walked through the property with the conservation groups to assess the potential and challenges of the landscape. What did the land need and how would they pay for it? “When the cost of doing this came back,” Holderman says,“it scared the shit out of us.” The necessary forest restoration was complex; they knew it would ultimately require tens of millions of dollars, so the groups planned to start small at roughly $250,000 a year. That has grown to well over $1 million annually.

Holderman recalls a time he accompanied Hamey on one of the hikes, the two of them threading their way through the crowded stand of redwoods as she swiveled her attention across the forest-scape and hovered her finger before its specimens. She explained to Holderman that if she were working for Big Creek Lumber Company—a local sustainable logging company that had previously employed her—she would take and sell that tree, that tree, this tree, and that tree under the selective logging rules that applied in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But as a forester for a conservation organization like Sempervirens that was trying to restore an ecosystem, she would choose different trees. She’d also take this tree and that tree, pointing out a couple that were practically huddling in the shadow of their thicker, taller sibling, crowding its personal space.

The idea was to divvy up the 8,532 acres into three groups, each managed with a different goal. About a tenth of the property is preservation reserves, where the old-growth forest is healthy, and she does little besides weed and maintain roads and culverts. Working forest and restoration reserves account for the remaining acres. In the 3,700 acres of working forest—43 percent of the property— Hamey maintains an ecosystem with trees that might be sold. She picks out large, healthy redwoods—though not the biggest, oldest redwoods—that forestry contractors harvest and Sempervirens and co-owner POST sell to Big Creek as lumber. Annual lumber revenue fluctuates, and all of it is directed, along with public grants and private donations, to fund restoration elsewhere on the property and road repair, a cost that also fluctuates, and altogether it has amounted to about $775,000 over the last five years.

“Cutting down trees is hard—really hard. And it feels so counterintuitive to protecting forests,” says Sara Barth. Still, the partner organizations are seeing the long-term benefits of working forests taking shape. “We do not take it lightly. We want a new generation of old-growth redwoods to be established. And when we see the growth and canopies improve in the working forests we are seeing success.”

The goal is to return the restoration reserves to old-growth forest conditions, directing the chain saws away from the trees they would have been aimed at in the working forest. “You flip that on its head in the restoration reserves, and instead of removing some of the larger trees, you pretty much pick the winner,” explains Hamey. Having identified the one big champion redwood—a “future oldgrowth recruitment tree,” in technical language—you then “cut selectively around it.” Some of the accessible logs are removed to reduce fuel for wildfires, while others are either sold or burned for biomass, returning nutrients to the soil. Or as was the case for roughly 30 acres, a prescribed fire burned away the undergrowth and fallen vegetation. Tree-cutting is “the way that we make big adjustments,” Hamey says, and “as long as we don’t introduce weeds, the aftermath is amazingly cool.”

These practices are an attempt to emulate how plants, trees, and animal life interact within a forest ecosystem, enabling it to heal itself from natural disturbances such as wind, lightning storms, landslides, or pest infestations. Research that spans nearly 50 years in Redwood National Park demonstrates that the approach is working. An unnaturally dense second-growth redwood forest site there, called Holter Ridge—which averaged 2,400 trees per hectare in 1978, versus 25 to 90 trees per hectare in old-growth forests—has been thinned periodically since ’78, and the diversity of plants growing in the understory, as well as tree growth, has increased ^{see footnote number 4}.

But extensive disturbance can be a problem. Typically, the stumpy clear-cut redwood forests that have been left to recover on their own wind up far denser than old-growth forests. Where the old redwood crowns could sometimes span 100 feet, shading out everything below, felling these giants had the effect of bathing wide swaths of the forest floor in sunlight, encouraging the growth of other sun-loving and often less fire-resistant species. Today, these forests are largely occupied by them, especially hardwoods like tanoak and Doug fir. Yet all the trees, across every species, compete with one another for sunlight, water, and nutrients. The redwoods struggle to regain vigor. So Hamey thins the trees around the biggest redwoods to reduce that competition, a practice known as “crown release.” Her goal is to direct the growth of these mixed-species woods back into flourishing redwood forests that can weather (and thrive on) the occasional, moderate wildfire—their original state before European settlers arrived.

Nadia Hamey was born in the late 1970s and lived in logging camps on Vancouver Island, off the western coast of Canada. She saw industrial clear-cutting level the old forests of the Clayoquot Sound and, as a youth in the ’80s and ’90s, participated in activist blockades and protests. “It’s in my blood to fight,” she says with a chuckle. But her father, a forester, and her mother, a habitat protection officer, advised her that she wasn’t going to achieve her goals by creating roadblocks with her body and stopping loggers from getting to work. “You need to use your brain,” they told her, and “change the law.” So she enrolled at UC Berkeley and earned a degree in forestry.

“I was anti-,” Hamey reflects, on her attitude toward the timber industry. “I wanted to influence the unsound practices of logging.” Yet to learn the practice of forestry after graduation, she worked short stints for two of the biggest clear-cut logging companies on the West Coast, Weyerhaeuser and Simpson Timber Company. Then she landed a job in 2003 at Big Creek Lumber, a family-owned operation in the Santa Cruz Mountains that has been, at times, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Big Creek Lumber is now responsible for selectively logging part of the working forest in San Vicente Redwoods, along with operating its own sawmill and managing other private timberlands. Janet McCrary Webb’s grandfather, great uncle, father, and uncle started the company in 1946, after World War II. They set up a portable sawmill and began harvesting some of the timber on a neighbor’s property in the Santa Cruz Mountains, just a few miles outside of where San Vicente Redwoods now sits. They learned that once cut, redwoods will then sprout into eight or ten new trees, meaning that tree-cutting promoted the growth of the forest. “They were able to pick and choose what trees to thin and realized that thinning worked really well in that redwood forest,” McCrary Webb, now president of Big Creek, explains.

“I really came around to embracing
active management as a way to steward
forests,” says Hamey.

When outside timber operators arrived to clear-cut the forest, the family lobbied alongside advocates for Forest Practice Rules, a set of regulations governed by the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the ’70s. The rules outlawed clear-cutting in the region, codifying it in the state’s Forest Practice Rules. Ever since, the only tree-cutting allowed has been “single tree selection.” This means foresters can’t create a gap in the forest larger than half an acre or remove a tree that’s not within 75 feet of another healthy and industrious leafy conifer, like a redwood. The goal, essentially, is to maintain a standing, thriving forest, whether it is managed as a working forest—one steadily supplying wood and other natural resources—or a mostly untouched forest preserve. The rules enabled small companies like Big Creek to remain in business.

Hamey calls her more than 10 years of past work for Big Creek Lumber, and her brief stints at other forestry companies, valuable learning experiences. Applying different silvicultural—forest science and management—practices could achieve wildly varying effects on a forest, nudging the direction of its growth and evolution. She also realized that in areas where the ecosystem was intact and healthy, it made sense to preserve land as wilderness, but when it came to more damaged woodland ecosystems, certain tree-cutting techniques could also return the forest to health. “I really came around to embracing active management as a way to steward forests,” she says.

➊

➋

➌

➍

➎

➊ To help restore heavily burned areas in San Vicente Redwoods (SVR), dead trees are logged and turned into biochar, a soil supplement. ➋ The thick, post-fire understory of SVR’s Deadman Gulch slows restoration efforts in 2024. Note the worker’s orange helmet in the background. ➌ Sempervirens Fund executive director, Sara Barth, visits Big Basin State Park after the CZU fire in 2020. ➍ Smaller trees with pink ribbons will be cut down in SVR’s restoration reserve to spur growth in a larger, older tree. ➎ SVR in 2016.

Buds in a redwood trunk sprout after fire, creating the green fuzzy “sweater” look seen in San Vicente Redwoods in 2022.

The post Why Cut Redwoods? appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

photo by Orenda Randuch

The Benefits of Old-Growth

Seeing an ancient coast redwood in person is awesome. Capable of reaching heights more than three hundred feet tall–taller than the Statue of Liberty–redwoods are providing both habitat and unparalleled carbon storage every inch of the way. As redwoods grow older, typically about 150 years old in ideal habitat conditions, they not only grow taller, they also grow wider, thicker, and reiterate their trunks–creating lots of space for Co2 on the inside and space for wildlife and plants on the outside.

As they age, redwoods also become more resilient: better able to protect themselves and support the forest. Their thick, armor-like bark can grow to be a foot thick–helping to protect them from fire, pests, and rot. Old-growth canopies are higher and harder for fire to reach. Their well-established root systems spread 100-feet wide and interconnect with fungi and other trees throughout the forest to share nutrients and information. Old-growth redwoods are able to help support the forest as a whole, and with their ancient lifespans they are able to live for millennia. Read more facts about Redwoods.

Old-growth redwoods are not only crucial for forest health, they are crucial for the fight against climate change and species’ survival.

photo by Orenda Randuch

The Changing Forest

Redwoods’ size and resilience also made them incredibly desirable as building materials. The redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains were being clear cut to build, and rebuild when disasters like the 1906 earthquake struck, the growing communities around them. While your fellow supporters formed Sempervirens Fund in 1900 to protect the remaining redwood forests, many forests were already reduced to stumps. Only 5% or less old-growth redwoods are estimated to remain throughout their entire range today. While redwoods are incredibly resilient and capable of resprouting, entire forests were growing back at the same time which created forests that were too close together to grow as large as they once were and without many of the benefits of old-growth to help support them.

Redwoods at Big Basin show resilience 5 years after CZU Fire, story by CBS News Bay Area

Today, clear cut logging is not allowed in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But the forests, struggling to grow back in tight quarters without the assistance of their elders, face the additional challenges of increased droughts, high temperatures, and fire. When the 2020 CZU Fire ignited across the Santa Cruz Mountains, forests were already at a disadvantage–close together, hot, and dry. The unprecedented fire tore through 86,000 acres including nearly every protected acre Sempervirens Fund cares for. While most of the redwoods are expected to recover from the fire, the urgency to make forests as resilient as possible for the increasingly extreme and unpredictable effects of climate change ahead was starkly underscored.

Fortunately, Sempervirens Fund had decades of experience resetting redwood forests from past damage utilizing a forest management approach called Restoration Forestry. Active restoration forestry techniques had helped redwood forests recuperate more quickly and they could help establish healthy forest conditions like old-growth redwoods in decades rather than centuries

Restoration Forestry

Restoration forestry can help reset forest health and resilience so forests can provide fresh air, clean water, habitat, and carbon storage. Despite being backed by both cutting-edge science and traditional Indigenous practices, the methods can seem antithetical to their goals at first–after all, wasn't it cutting and fire that got the forest into this state in the first place?–but armed with research, humility, and observation, the results are becoming clearer and reinforce the need for our active management of forests.

When Sempervirens Fund protected a former tree farm in 2008, once known as Sempervirens 236, it was clear the forest near Boulder Creek would need more restoration forestry than any property we had protected before, in order to help return the industrial rows of trees back into a healthy, diverse, resilient forest. With the guidance of professionals like Forester Nadia Hamey, a plan was put in place to reduce competition and potential fuel for a fire, and increase the growth of larger redwoods, known as old-growth recruitment, and improve the forest’s resilience to challenges like fires and droughts. By 2019, we were already seeing an increase in biodiversity on the forest floor–a sign the forest can support more species. In 2023, Sempervirens 236’s redwood forests, now healthy and thriving, were added to Castle Rock State Park.

While a redwood forest might be able to restore itself given centuries and ideal conditions, the threats of climate change are unpredictable and urgent. Through restoration forestry techniques, forests like those at Sempervirens 236 can recover from the past and be resilient for the future more quickly.

photo by Rebecca Thomas

Forestry Techniques

The Living Laboratory

Restoration Forestry techniques like these are now helping the largest private forest remaining in the Santa Cruz Mountains recover from a history of logging, mining, and the severe 2020 CZU Fire, and regain resiliency as quickly as possible so the forest can both survive and help fight climate change. In the forests of San Vicente Redwoods that humans have exploited for nearly a century, we’re attempting to strike a careful balance of human involvement.

photo by Orenda Randuch

“Restoration at scale was always going to be tricky,” says Sempervirens Fund’s Executive Director Sara Barth. San Vicente Redwoods is a living laboratory where we seek to enhance its health by applying insights from academic research, other conservation organizations (including Peninsula Open Space Trust, Save the Redwoods League, and Land Trust Santa Cruz County), and the restoration forestry practices that helped reset Sempervirens 236 on a healthy trajectory for recovery. “Having a restoration and working forest in tandem has taught us a lot about not only supporting the forest’s long-term health but also how to prepare for and respond to wildfire.”

Protected in 2011, San Vicente Redwoods vast 8,532 acres include different plant communities, topographies, and different needs for recovery. Forester Nadia Hamey helped to prioritize the needs of the forest into different sections: Preservation - where the forest needs maintenance to stay healthy; Restoration - where the forest benefits from strategic thinning so trees can grow larger; and Working Forest - where the Old-Growth Recruitment helps redwoods gain much needed old-growth characteristics more quickly.

Any trees that are strategically cut for the forest’s health further benefit the forest by being utilized for habitat on the forest floor or in creeks, processed into biomass to return nutrients to the soil without the risk of becoming fuel for fire, or sold as lumber and reinvested into further work to restore San Vicente Redwoods.

Experts Dig into the Controversy

Restoration forestry and relying on sustainable logging to help fund conservation of San Vicente Redwoods has been controversial and it remains complicated today, even for its advocates. That includes Hamey. Logging can be done well or poorly, just like many other resource management objectives. When done well, it provides a sustainable source of wood with little long-term impact to the forest ecosystem,” she said. “We can use the revenue from timber harvesting to help achieve other land management objectives, like weed control, road maintenance, fuel reduction, large woody debris installation, etc.”

Dan Sicular, a California environmental planning consultant with 35 years of experience, believes that selling the logs harvested through thinning can help to fund forest restoration work, though he knows this view is controversial. His view acknowledges the reality of the outsized role of the timber economy in the West today; California’s forest industry contributes $39 billion to the state’s economy. With logging companies owning some of the largest tracts of land in the Santa Cruz Mountains, “I see some conservation benefit from having an active logging industry,” Sicular argued, especially when the alternative is for the companies to subdivide the parcels and sell them off, fragmenting crucial habitats. Also, since the logging companies don’t want their investments to burn up, they have a strong incentive to manage their land to prevent and control wildfire.

video by Jordan Plotsky

Tim Hyland, an environmental scientist for California State Parks, argues that in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the problem today is that there are too many trees, since forest managers stopped using fire to thin their ranks, especially fire-sensitive species like the Douglas fir. “So much damage to these ecosystems has happened in the last 100 to 200 years that it’s very easy for people to feel like, ‘please don’t touch it and it'll be fine.’”

Hyland acknowledged that, left alone for hundreds of years, the forest might eventually recover its state prior to Euro-American settlement, with one large tree out-competing the others to create a forest of giant redwoods that are widely-spaced from one another. But in a warming, drying climate, the smaller trees now crowding the understory are more susceptible to catastrophic, high-severity fires that leave significant damage. “A whole bunch of little sticks burn a lot better than one great big stick,” he explained. And since California forest managers have kept fire largely at bay for over a century, “lighting a fire in them is like playing with matches in a dynamite factory,” he said. “The fuels have built up to a point where it's extremely challenging to introduce fire in a safe way.” In this scenario, mechanical thinning of the smaller trees—cutting them, in other words—is a necessary safety measure before conducting prescribed burns.

video by Jordan Plotsky

Even while acknowledging that some trees must be cut down, Hyland remains skeptical. Felling the trees and dragging them out of the forest kicks up dust, disturbs the environment, and risks introducing invasive plants through the heavy equipment. “My primary problem with it is that humans are at the helm,” he said, “and if the decisions are influenced by financial considerations, then they're not primarily influenced by what the land needs.”

At San Vicente Redwoods, restoration forestry has been practiced with a lot of humility, evaluation, and a willingness to adjust if tactics aren’t working. Results of work done before the CZU Fire are incredibly encouraging and provide insight into where and how restoration forestry can help the forest recover from that fire and help protect it and nearby communities for the next fire.

Results for Redwoods

In February 2020–just a few months before thousands of lightning strikes ignited the CZU Fire in August 2020, crucial restoration forestry work took place that both helped protect the forest and nearby communities. Thirty acres in San Vicente Redwoods’ Restoration Reserve forest section were treated using prescribed and cultural burns, and more than 15 miles of shaded fuel breaks were created. The areas with prescribed burns appear to have weathered the blaze much better than the adjacent untreated parts of the forest. And the shaded fuel break helped fire crews stop the fire from spreading to a nearby community.

A photo of blackened tree trunks with healthy green canopies intact above was treated with a shaded fuel break prior to the CZU Fire and burned less severely. A photo of mostly standing dead trees with only a handful of trees bearing green regrowth and much more dense understory growth along the ground was not treated with a shaded fuel break prior to the CZU Fire and burned more severely. Photos taken in 2023 by Ian Bornarth.

“We’re seeing results that indicate restoration forestry are these redwood forests' best chance of recovering from past damage and both surviving and fighting climate change,” said Barth. Restoration Forestry is a key component to Sempervirens Fund’s Climate Action Plan, a plan to accelerate the protection and resilience of redwoods by 2030.

The post Growing Old-Growth appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

Investing in Water and Wildfire Protection for Redwoods and Communities

Across California our water, forests, and communties are at risk from soaring temperatures, flooding and droughts, extremes storms, and wildfire. And for far too long we have been responding to the latest crisis, rather than improving conditions to weather the next one. Fortunately, in 2024, voters can have an immediate—and lasting—impact on protecting water, forests, and communities.

At Sempervirens Fund we are proud to support Prop 4, a $10 billion statewide climate bond, and Measure Q, which would establish the Santa Cruz County Safe Drinking Water, Clean Beaches, Wildfire Risk Reduction, & Wildlife Protection Act. Learn more below and take action.

The post Water and Wildfire Protection for Redwoods appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

A view of rare, Santa Cruz sandhills habitat on a slope surrounded by forests

A manzanita branch casts a dark shadow against the bright Zayante soil in Santa Cruz sandhills

Up close, grains of Zayante soil reflect tiny rainbows of light from their surfaces

Miocene fossil shapes can be seen in the delicate sandstone of Santa Cruz sandhills

Fossils from a sea cow found in Santa Cruz sandhills habitat

Harsh Habitat

It might look a bit barren, especially compared to the lush redwood forest next door. And unfortunately, that may have led to the mining, development, and decline of this ultra-rare habitat. But ecologist Dr. Jodi McGraw, who wrote the book—or rather the Sandhills Conservation and Management Plan—says while they may be smaller, she sees more species in the sandhills’ harsh conditions, including creatures from the redwoods and sometimes even the redwoods themselves, than she does in the forest over the decades she has studied the habitats.

Dr. Jodi McGraw examines sticky monkeyflower growing along the trail in Santa Cruz sandhills habitat

A sandy hill top dotted with tiny plants and blue flags marking the trail looks bare compared to the surrounding green habitats

A ridge of closed Santa Cruz sandhills habitat erodes in a patch on the left from continued use

Foggy redwood forest along the sunny edge of Santa Cruz sandhills

Like the shark teeth and shell fossils found in its sand, the sediment found in Santa Cruz sandhills rose up through space and time, from the bottom of the ocean during the Miocene Epoch, about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago. Of the approximately 6,000 acres of ancient sea floor that gave rise to Santa Cruz sandhills habitat, Dr. McGraw says about 3,000 acres remain. Making them even more rare, those 3,000 acres are actually two different sandhills communities: sandhills chaparral characterized by manzanitas, and sand parkland featuring disjunct populations of ponderosa pines found much lower than their usual 3,000-foot plus elevations.

Santa Cruz sandhills sand chapparral habitat at Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve

Ponderosa pines rise from a sandy slope of Santa Cruz sandhills parkland

A sandy trail through lush, green Santa Cruz sandhills chaparral habitat and the towering redwood forest beyond

The sandy low-nutrient soil is sandhills plants' first line of defense. “This habitat is so extreme, other species can’t survive there,” explains James Maughn, a docent who guides hikes through protected Santa Cruz sandhills parkland habitat at Quail Hollow Ranch County Park. The plants that do grow here know how to survive with very little—little nutrients, little water, little shade, and very little stability in an easily shifting ground. These conditions are nearly opposite of those in the neighboring redwood forest habitat, but the water that slips through those sandy soils refills aquifers that give life to the redwoods and the rest of the ecosystem. Living in such close proximity, redwood and sandhill plant communities often share the same water, weather, and fire. And fire is sandhills plants’ next line of defense. Like coast redwoods, Santa Cruz sandhills plants are fire-adapted and need fire to survive and thrive.

James (Jim) Maughn smiles looking at a plant along the trail through Santa Cruz sandhills habitat

The still standing blackened remains of Santa Cruz sandhills plants at Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve after the 2020 CZU Fire

Lupine flowers blanket the Santa Cruz sandhills to the forest edge of recovering and dead trees at Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve three years after the CZU Fire

Persistent Plants

Sandhills species have adapted to live without what most plants need and through what most plants can’t. Unique life grows from unique conditions. Three endangered plants live in the Santa Cruz sandhills and two others can’t be found anywhere else on Earth.

Ben Lomond Spineflower

One look at their pointy petals and you can guess where the Ben Lomond spineflower (Chorizanthe pungens var. hartwegiana) gets its name. But consider yourself lucky if you do see one of these federally-endangered wildflowers. They bloom from April through July but their small populations have only been found in the Santa Cruz mountains north of Santa Cruz. While they like some habitat disturbances such as a trail edge or gopher hole to open up space for them, invasive grasses making their way from nearby homes or past misguided attempts to “stabilize” the soil are a disturbance that further threatens their survival, explains Maughn. That being said, Henry Cowell State Park Interpreter Dylan McManus might consider himself, and the sandhills, incredibly lucky. At the end of May, McManus found a patch of Ben Lomond spineflower in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. And it may be a new patch that no one has documented before.

Ben Lomond Buckwheat

Nestled in openings in sandhills chaparral or beneath the ponderosa pines in sandhills parkland, Ben Lomond buckwheat (Eriogonum nudum var. decurrens) blooms support pollinators from June to October. Of the 25 likely butterfly and moth pollinators, Dr. McGraw said there may be a subspecies of dotted blue butterfly exclusive to the Santa Cruz sandhills. Unfortunately, despite Ben Lomond buckwheat’s already small numbers, small habitat, and the California Native Plant Society listing it as one of California’s most rare and endangered plants, it isn’t protected by federal or state laws. Although they are a fire adapted species, with so little known about these rare habitats and their inhabitants, Dr. McGraw says the challenge has shifted from reintroducing fire to sandhills plant communities in the previous decade to preventing too-frequent fire as a result of climate change. “Fires too often can potentially prevent even fire-adapted plants from persisting,” she notes.

Santa Cruz Wallflower

Of the sandhills’ endangered plants, the Santa Cruz wallflower (Erysimum teretifolium) is the most rare. “It takes multiple years to mature and flowers only once”, explains McManus. When it does bloom, its bright yellow petals typically appear from February to May in open areas and along trail edges. “Santa Cruz wallflowers don’t do well with competition,” Maughn shares, which is why populations at Quail Hollow and Bonny Doon benefit from active management to decrease erosion, pull invasive plants, and utilize fire to fend off encroaching plants and awaken seeds.

Santa Cruz Cypress

Seeds like those of the endangered Santa Cruz cypress (Hesperocyparis abramsiana var. abramsiana), are serotinous and open only from the heat of fire. Endemic to the Santa Cruz mountains, the Santa Cruz cypress can only be found on 350 acres, half of which is Santa Cruz sandhills habitat. The Santa Cruz cypress was once found in Henry Cowell State Park sandhills habitat but now is on the brink of extinction, McManus laments.

But all isn’t lost yet.

Some endemic species are surviving in surprising ways.

Santa Cruz County Monkeyflower

A rare plant found only in the county, Santa Cruz County monkeyflower (Mimulus rattanii ssp. decurtatus) isn’t a usual suspect in most places including rare sandhills habitat. However, McManus says he sees them at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park growing in burned areas of sandhills chaparral where it blooms from May to July.

California Pinefoot

As harsh as the Santa Cruz sandhills seem for plants, a rare endemic plant thought only to grow in northern California was recently found in sandhills habitat for the first time. “Last season, a California pinefoot [Pityopus californicus] was discovered in the Santa Cruz sandhills at Henry Cowell. It was one of the most southern coastal documentations of the plant, a range expansion for the species,” McManus shares. Finding the species further south and in such a rare and specialized habitat is unexpected.

Bonny Doon Manzanita

Although Bonny Doon manzanitas (Arctostaphylos silvicola) have silvery leaves that reflect light and keep water in order to survive in the sandhills, they can’t survive fire. But they can flourish from it. Like Santa Cruz cypress, Bonny Doon manzanita relies on fire to create areas of open, bare soil and promote seed germination, McGraw notes. Fires in the last 20 years have helped to reestablish Bonny Doon manzanitas, many of which sprouted from seeds collected underground by their rodent custodians.

Waning Wildlife

Santa Cruz Kangaroo Rat

Rodents like the rare Santa Cruz kangaroo rat (Dipodomys venustus venustus) are considered a keystone species for the outsized impact they have on their habitat. Their contributions to storing seeds likely helped save the Bonny Doon manzanita they rely on for shoots to eat and shelter in its brush. Sadly, populations monitored since the 1980s started to disappear as off trail recreation crushed their burrows and eroded their fragile habitat. A bit like a kangaroo, their powerful hind legs help them move across the shifting sands but their short front legs wouldn’t be able to dig a burrow in anything harder than the loose Zayante soils of sandhills. It was looking bleak as Santa Cruz kangaroo rats were extirpated from all but one of their only known habitat locations. Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park had the last known population of Santa Cruz kangaroo rats in the sandhills. That is, until 2019, when they were rediscovered in Sierra Azul Open Space after 76 years. Mid Peninsula Open Space began work to enhance the habitat at Sierra Azul this spring and researchers are hoping this newfound population can help them gather enough data to get the imperiled Santa Cruz Kangaroo rat the Endangered Species Act protections before these special stewards are gone forever.

While the Santa Cruz kangaroo rats may not depend solely on the sandhills habitat for survival, other species do. Like little deserts in the rainforest, Santa Cruz sandhills have nurtured creatures like the desert-iconic the greater roadrunner and more specialized species, like the Mount Hermon June beetle, contributing to the incredible biodiversity of the Santa Cruz mountains. There are still species in the Santa Cruz sandhills that haven’t been described by science, and of those that have, two are endangered.

Zayante Band-Winged Grasshopper

Zayante band-winged grasshoppers (Trimerotropis infantilis) has been federally listed as an endangered species since 1997, but it's not for lack of skills. They can only fly a few feet, but that’s pretty good by grasshopper standards, and when they fly they produce a buzzing sound that helps them evade predators. The challenge is, they are currently only known to live in Santa Cruz sandhills parkland habitat—the rarest of the rare with approximately 600 acres of suitable habitat remaining. And without fire to help hold them at bay, both native and non-native plants are moving in and changing the habitat with shade and leaf litter, which might sound harmless but it decreases both the imperiled grasshoppers and their habitat. McManus reports Zayante band-winged grasshopper populations are very small and you’re unlikely to see one in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park but your best chance may be during their flight season from May to October, with peak flight activity between July and August.

Mount Hermon June Beetle

Their fellow endangered sandhills insect, the Mount Hermon June beetle (Polyphylla barbata) faces a few more challenges than the Zayante band-winged grasshopper. Mount Hermon June beetles spend most of their lives as grubs, enriching the rare Zayante soil underground. Despite their humble and crucial role, they’re often viewed as pests by those who encounter them. “It's really hard to get people excited about beetles,” Maughn laughs. Those who might lend the endangered species some compassion could still easily confuse it with the common ten-lined beetle. And while disappearing habitat threatens their survival, so does leaving it. Mount Hermon June beetles are attracted to light and water which can draw them from their protected habitat into nearby yards treated with pesticides and into pools—they’re not swimmers. Unsuspecting neighbors may not even realize they’ve found an endangered species.

Mount Hermon june beetle (left) is smaller with less defined lines than the ten-lined beetle (right)

Of course not all species that benefit from these rare habitats are endemic or endangered. Wildlife like bobcats, hummingbirds, and acorn woodpeckers that shelter in the redwood forest are known to seek food in the Santa Cruz sandhills. “Species utilize both habitats for a variety of reasons,” Dr. McGraw says. Even redwoods themselves can be found enjoying drainages that keep their roots wet in the sandhills, she points out, like those growing near Eagle Creek in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. “But banana slugs probably steer clear,” Dr. McGraw laughs. And the sandhills bring a bit of the desert to the redwoods as well.

Dylan McManus moving a Pacific Gopher Snake off trail

Merriam's chipmunks

Western fence lizard

Acorn woodpecker

Depositing an acorn

Acorns in a "granary tree"

The sandhills provide habitat for wildlife from hotter drier habitats that might not otherwise be in the Santa Cruz mountains. Like the California whiptail lizard, (Aspidoscelis tigris munda) which has a need for speed and enjoys the Santa Cruz sandhills warm, open, sands where they can bury themselves and run down their prey while hunting. But some of these species are also feeling the impacts of our presence. The greater roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) was seen in the sandhills until they were unfortunately hunted down by domestic cats living nearby in 1964. Invasive ants also living in homes nearby are making their way into the sandhills and outcompeting the native ants the Blainville's horned lizards (Phrynosoma blainvillii)—still recovering from a century of exploitation being sold as pets and varnish-coated tourist souvenirs—eat there.

Saving Sandhills

Santa Cruz sandhills habitat is not only extraordinarily unique—complementing the redwood forests and adding tremendous biodiversity to the Santa Cruz mountain region—it’s also extraordinarily fragile. “We’re still learning about this community, but the learning window is closing and it's important for us to steward it before it disappears,” McManus says. The good news? The second longest contiguous stretch of Santa Cruz sandhills habitat left on Earth is protected at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. But the struggle to save it is far from over.

“When you add hiking, biking and horseback riding to sandhills, the landscape changes at an alarming rate”

The trail in this second largest contiguous stretch of sandhills follows the edge of a restricted area, allowing visitors to enjoy the fragile area from the perimeter with minimal impact to the sensitive habitat and its inhabitants. But sadly some visitors are loving the sandhills to death by going off trail, making their own trails, and tearing out trail signage that helps other visitors stay on trail. “The trail system (in the sandhills extension) can be confusing due to the fact that illegal and new trails are continually being developed within the closed area, and the park faces an uphill battle to install infrastructure that isn't vandalized," McManus shares. And while some may think going off trail isn’t that big of a deal, in sandhills, it's one of the biggest. “This isn’t sandstone like Moab,” McGraw explains. “This crumbles at your touch. Sandhills erode incredibly fast,” she continues. When you add hiking, biking and horseback riding to sandhills, the landscape changes at an alarming rate, McManus agrees.

Luckily, there are several ways you can recreate responsibly in and learn more about how to protect Santa Cruz sandhills.

Where to Go

While many wildflowers bloom in spring, sandhills plant communities will begin flowering with manzanitas in the winter with wildflowers blossoming in the spring and often lasting through summer.

Guided Hikes

• In the summer, McManus says Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park leads hikes in the sandhills at 9am on the second Saturday every month. Check out their schedule for the next hike.
• April is the only time of year the public can visit Quail Hollow’s ultra-rare sandhills parkland habitat. It’s only accessible by guided hikes every Sunday. Spaces are limited and fill up fast, so Maughn recommends visitors check for openings in February or March.

Trails

If you can’t snag a space on one of the highly sought after guided hikes, here are some of the best trails to admire the fragile fleeting beauty of Santa Cruz sandhills habitat:

Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve

Dr. McGraw recommends the Silverleaf and Wallflower loops to traverse sandhills habitat.

Learn More

Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park

McManus suggests hiking to the Observation Deck, which has both easy and moderate version, for a trip through and a great view of sandhills.

Learn More

Quail Hollow Ranch County Park

Maughn recommends the Sunset Trail that features sandhills chaparral along the way.

Learn More

How to Help

The Sandhills Conservation and Management Plan just turned 20 this May and Dr. McGraw is looking at updating it with the latest science and priorities. In the 20 years since the plan was created, there has been heartbreak as populations have disappeared and delight as new populations have been found. Hope is not lost—Santa Cruz sandhills greatest hope for survival could be you.

You can help by:

Staying on Trails

Staying on trails and adhering to trail closures is the best way to enjoy nature responsibly but especially crucial in such rare, fragile habitats as Santa Cruz sandhills, Dr. McGraw and McManus urge. "If we don't steward this landscape and it continues on its current path of degradation, then over time species' densities and distributions will change and the unique biodiversity we experience when recreating responsibly in this ecosystem will also begin to change,” McManus explains. Please be mindful of your impact on and movement of the sand. These soils crumble and are displaced easily, Maughn adds.

It’s estimated that two-thirds of Santa Cruz sandhills habitat is unprotected and privately-owned. If you live near these incredibly rare ecosystems, here are more ways you can help:

Volunteer

Removing invasive plants can be hard work but it's one of the most helpful ways to help care for endangered Santa Cruz sandhills habitat. Look for volunteer opportunities at parks with sandhills habitat like Quail Hollow Ranch County Park and Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.

Pets

When living near sandhills, keeping pets inside and on leash where appropriate can have an enormous positive impact for sandhills species.

Lights

If you are a fan of bugs, you can help protect them by turning off unnecessary outdoor lights that draw them away from safer habitat. If you’re not a fan of bugs, you can see less of them by turning off unnecessary lights outside that attract them to your home. It’s a win-win!

Inform

Not everyone knows how rare, fragile, and unique Santa Cruz sandhills are. Share with others what you know about this habitat and these incredible species and let them know how they can help. Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park has lots of great resources for sharing and learning more and McManus is working on more:

• Video Playlist
• Santa Cruz sandhills video with Dr. Jodi McGraw
• Teacher Resources

The post Santa Cruz Sandhills appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

The post Help Rebuild State Parks appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

photo by Orenda Randuch

By Dr. Daniel Lewis

Every tree has a life, both individually and as part of a collective, and they to populate our daily lives. They’ve been part of our sightlines and metaphors, our byways, our contexts. We all know them in one way or another, as consumers and users of their wood and byproducts, or through closer associations with individual trees. We all know trees that grew up with us as children. Trees in parking lots, bristling with tiny unseen life, or ones that we witnessed falling, or helped to fell. Trees we hid under for shelter in the rain, or in baking heat. Trees whose smells and sounds and sights trigger deep memories. Trees that sat outside our houses and marked the seasons, losing foliage and growing back, or extending a limb to the windowsill to risk climbing down, to a wider, freer world.

Trees are symbionts, working in conjunction with an army of other organisms that build biodiversity and buttress life on the planet. They are ecosystems that sustain life in and among their roots, trunks, branches, and crowns. Forests also regulate our food security, feeding the planet through a profusion of fruits, vegetables, nuts, spices, and other edibles, as well as our medical needs. Trees provide urban identity, splendor, cooling, and coherence.

The sheer ubiquity of arboreal names also speaks to our cultural desire to signify their importance and to impart some essence of the tranquility and stability inherent in trees: of the twenty most common street names in the United States, five are trees: Oak, Pine, Maple, Cedar, and Elm. We record them like scribes copying manuscripts, over and over again: holiday cards and directions and job applications and passwords. Larch and birch and oak and arbor. In my adopted state of California, the word “wood” shows up on the signs of 14,000 different streets. They are the nomenclatural currency of our lives, these tree words, and we find our way home through them.

“Trees are also our custodians, forecasters, and predictors in an era of changing climates”

Trees are also our custodians, forecasters, and predictors in an era of changing climates. They protect the ground beneath us through their stabilizing and biodiversifying effects. They lower our pulses, and deepen our breath. Trees are powerful actors on our environment. In their total biomass they provide nearly bottomless carbon sinks, annually sequestering millions of tons of carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas that would otherwise remain in the atmosphere or leach into the earth’s oceans, heating the planet more rapidly. Their work with CO2 is also easy to misunderstand: although it’s often spoken of as a global evil, trees need it to live. Trees don’t just house CO2; they use it as they take it in, appropriate it for photosynthesis, and produce oxygen.

photo by Orenda Randuch

Time changes everything. Much of trees’ timeframes are rendered as a vast evolutionary sweep across the face of the planet’s clock. But eons are made up of days and nights—infinitesimal slices of time in the larger march of life, and trees matter on tiny timescales, too.

photo by Orenda Randuch

My father—a quiet man, stormy, unhappy, and dogged—spent some of his most satisfying moments on the sprawling grounds of our house, which stood on a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean in Hawai‘i, where he planted ironwood saplings he hoped would grow large enough to staunch the constant erosion of our property into the sea eighty feet below. Many are still there, risen huge. One of my strongest childhood memories was of a tree I helped to remove—a large pandanus in our yard, with tall prop roots that emerged out of the ground, so the tree was on stilts. It was hot, sweaty work, but my dad offered to buy me anything I wanted (within reason) if I helped with the job. It took weeks. He had never offered up this kind of prize, so I was committed to the task. I was eleven or twelve, and I had been pining for a crossbow, and true to my dad’s word, one arrived at our doorstep. I was thrilled, and then proceeded to fire this weapon high into the trunks of gigantic banyan trees on neighboring properties. The arrows are still there, a half-century later. Humans are the tip of the arrow. We have paved the way to decline. Now it’s our chance to pioneer a path to rejuvenation.

Trees need to have their own rights, and be accorded their own dignity. They are essential to all of our lives, and they need our help. The salvation of trees can be the salvation of humans.

“The salvation of trees can be the salvation of humans.”

Trees have already given us so much. We can feel affinity for them without requiring human notions of emotion from them in return. To move to a more environmentally just world, we need to extend our idea of rights, respect, and value to trees and the land that supports us all without anthropomorphizing or monetizing them.

The post Living with Trees: A Historian’s Perspective for the Future appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

The post Save Climate Funding in State Budget appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

Properties acquired by Sempervirens Fund since the 2020 CZU fire will help establish the Saddle Mountain Welcome Area at Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

Boulder Creek, Calif. (April 26, 2024) — Today, Sempervirens Fund, California’s first land trust, announced the purchase of two properties adjacent to Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which are intended to support California State Parks in creating a new entrance at Big Basin, ensuring the long-term health of its old-growth redwoods, and improving access for visitors, especially in response to the 2020 CZU fire.

Although only 10 acres, the two properties combine with 184 acres of land protected by Sempervirens Fund since 2022, in the conservation area the state agency calls Saddle Mountain. Combined, the nearly 200 acres of redwoods will be key in Reimagining Big Basin as State Parks envisions the relocation of park infrastructure like visitor services and employee housing away from their former location near prime old-growth redwood habitat. Planning for reimagining Big Basin commenced following the CZU Fire in 2020, which burned 97% of Big Basin, including the original visitor’s center and other park services buildings.

Assemblymember Gail Pellerin’s AB 2103, which passed out of committee earlier this week, makes it easier for State Parks to acquire land for Big Basin, as well as Butano and Año Nuevo State Parks.

The view from Sterrenzee Ridgetop, one of six properties protected for the Saddle Mountain Conservation Area since the 2020 CZU fire. Photo by Orenda Randuch.

“We’re thrilled to be able to expand protected land in the Saddle Mountain Conservation Area and look forward to State Parks acquiring the 200 acres to secure the new entrance to Big Basin,” said Sara Barth, Executive Director of Sempervirens Fund. “A big takeaway from the Reimagining Big Basin process was that we need to relocate critical park infrastructure away from the old-growth forests, and this land is the perfect site to make that vision a reality. Advancing AB 2103 would help expedite Reimagining Big Basin at a critical time.”

“AB 2103 will help provide State Parks timely transfers of land acquired by conservation organizations near Big Basin, Año Nuevo, and Butano State Parks to speed up the land acquisition process and permanently protect lands for conservation, cultural, or recreational purposes,” stated Gail Pellerin (D- Santa Cruz). “Following the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Wildfire, which burned across the entirety of Big Basin Redwoods State Park and portions of surrounding parks, this bill is important to reimagine the future of Big Basin, California’s oldest state park.”

Both properties, located in the Boulder Creek Watershed, are sparsely forested with second growth redwoods and hardwoods and contain very impressive views of the upper San Lorenzo Valley. Sempervirens Fund now owns 6 properties in the Saddle Mountain Conservation Area, including the Gateway to Big Basin, Saddle Mountain Vista, and the properties that comprise Sterrenzee Ridgetop.

The Park Core Vision Concepts for Big Basin with the entrance and welcome area at Saddle Mountain. From www.reimaginingbigbasin.org

Together they are likely to be the future home for new visitor-serving facilities at Big Basin. State Parks’ Reimagining Big Basin Vision Summary from 2022 identifies Saddle Mountain as the ideal location to create a park welcome center with some new park buildings and day-use parking away from the old-growth redwood forests where they have historically been housed. Relocating park development and infrastructure, most of which were destroyed by the CZU Fire, out of the forest will increase the health and resiliency of Big Basin’s old-growth redwoods.

“Reimagining Big Basin will only be successful with partners stepping up to advance critical needs, like expanding the area of parklands around Saddle Mountain to accommodate necessary visitor-serving facilities,” said Chris Spohrer, Superintendent, Santa Cruz District-California State Parks. “We are grateful to Sempervirens Fund and their donors for protecting nearly 200-acres of forests at the entrance to Big Basin over the last three years.”

Sempervirens Fund paid $845,000 for both properties, and funding for the purchases came from the Lipman Family Foundation and more than 600 individual donors, including one bequest.

The post NEWS: Sempervirens Fund Acquires Properties for New Entrance to Big Basin Redwoods State Park; AB 2103 Advances in State Legislature appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

The post California Climate Bond appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

The post America the Beautiful appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.

All photos and video by Orenda Randuch Photography

Notes on Mushroom Identification

Hundreds of fungi are known to exist in the redwoods but there are an estimated 3 million species of fungi on the planet and only about 140,000 of those have been described by science. Even those that have been described are sometimes re-classified, like the mica cap, as we learn more about them. Pictures can’t always give us all of the information needed to properly identify a mushroom, like yellow staining milk caps and southern candy caps which could look similar from above at different stages. Seeing a mushroom from below, like its gills, or inside, like the center of its stipe, can help but sometimes spore color–which can require time or a microscope–are needed to be sure, Maya notes.

Mushroom cap

Mushroom cap and stipe shape

Mushroom stipe base and gills

Mushroom stipe center

What is a Mushroom?

You may think of mushrooms as food, medicine, or psychedelics but to fungi mushrooms are reproductive organs. When you consume a mushroom, you are only consuming the fruiting body of a much larger organism. “The body of the fungus is mycelium, which is a filamentous network made up of microscopic strands called hyphae,” Maya explains. A mushroom’s role is to share its genetic information to create the next generation. The reason we see mushrooms while most of the fungus is underneath the soil, is because a mushroom rises up to where it can spread its spores on the wind or with the help of passersby.

Brown Cup Mushroom

Brown cup mushrooms (Peziza arvernensis), like these found recycling wood to enrich the soil at San Vicente Redwoods, release spores from the smooth inner surface of their cup in a delicate smoke-like wisp after its been triggered by touch or a burst of air. Maya suggests blowing on a cup mushroom with a long stream of air to see its spores dance gently away. It takes billions of spores to be visible to the human eye, Maya shares, each one of those spores contains genetic information to create the next generation of fungi.

Brown cup mushrooms

Spore Color

The color of spores can be a helpful way to confirm the identity of mushrooms like Pholiota velaglutinosa that have look-alikes with similar habitats like other fungi in the Pholiota family. Spores are tiny but a mushroom’s gills are designed to pack as many in as possible. The best way to see a mushroom’s spore color is to place the mushroom in question on a plain white sheet of paper and covering it with a bowl to see the color of the spores as they collect on the paper, Maya suggests. Pholiota velaglutinosa has brown spores. Another helpful clue for confirming Pholiota velaglutinosa, also known as the slimy-veiled Pholiota, is the thick slimy coat on the reddish brown cap when it's fresh.

Pholiota velaglutinosa mushroom

The Dangers of Decay

While many fungi help to decay wood and dead plant matter–creating space and nutrients for the next generation–a mushroom’s own decay can make it difficult to properly identify. Even past its prime, this large mushroom felt nearly as heavy as the wood it was growing on. But Maya cautions, decay can effect identifying features of mushrooms—some are even known to have their flesh change color when bruised or cut. This specimen is decayed enough that Maya isn’t confident of its identity.

Mushroom specimens too decayed for confident identification

Violet Tooth

Rarely seen in the Santa Cruz mountains or on conifers–trees that make cones–this violet tooth (Trichaptum biforme) was found helpfully breaking down the wood of a burned Douglas-fir at San Vicente Redwoods. It’s violet edge helps differentiate it from the more common turkey tail (Trametes versicolor) but the color can fade as the mushroom ages.

Violet tooth mushroom

Rosy Conk

Another colorful soon to be fan-shaped fungi decomposing a scorched fallen Douglas-fir is the rosy conk (Rhodofomes cajanderi). When young, the rosy conk can be hoof shaped like these. Look closely and you may see what appear to be drops of blood but don’t worry, the reddish droplets are enzymes the mushrooms release.

Rosy conk mushrooms

Mica cap mushroom

Mica Cap

While foraging isn’t permitted in San Vicente Redwoods fragile recovering ecosystem, this common edible mushroom can be found growing in clusters near the stumps, dead trees, and logs that it breaks down from fall into spring throughout the redwood range. Mica cap (Coprinus micaceus, formerly known as Coprinus micaceus until 2001) doesn’t have much flesh but can be used to make flavorful sauces and gravies. One of their easiest identifying features is its deliquescing gills which means they release their spores in an inky liquid.

Copy Caps

Yellow staining milk cap (Lactarius xanthogalactus) can be found growing from southern California to Oregon where these mycorrhizal fungi network with the roots of trees to exchange nutrients and information. But this yellow staining milk cap was seen growing at San Vicente Redwoods where it has a look-alike. Maya explains yellow staining milk cap isn’t edible and can give you a tummy ache while its similar looking cousin southern candy cap (Lactarius rufulus) is edible. Her bonus tip? She likes to place southern candy caps on the dashboard of her car and enjoy their maple syrupy smell as they dry like a natural air freshener before cooking with them. Southern candy caps grow and partner with coast live oaks and so will yellow staining milk caps. Maya says the best way to make sure you don’t have a yellow staining milk cap is to look for their namesake yellow milk-like substance that they lactate.

Southern candy cap mushroom

Southern candy cap mushroom

Yellow staining milk cap mushroom

Yellow staining milk cap mushroom

Confusing these cap mushrooms is a mistake you can certainly survive to regret. However, there are three mushrooms in the Santa Cruz mountains that Maya says it could be possible not to survive misidentifying.

Poisonous Mushrooms and Mistaken Identity

Despite common misconceptions of deadly mushrooms, Maya says you can touch or take the tiniest bite of any mushroom and you’ll be fine. However, the three most common deadly poisonous mushrooms in the Santa Cruz mountains—death cap (Amanita phalloides), deadly galerina (Galerina marginata), and western destroying angel (Amanita ocreata)—can easily be mistaken for other mushrooms and consumed in dangerous amounts.

Destroying Angel

Thankfully, a western destroying angel (Amanita ocreata) can be identified by its white gills, wide bulbous volva (sack) at the base of of its stipe, and tough stipe that is not hollow, Maya explains. A stipe is what us non-mycologists might think of as a stem or stalk. Young western destroying angel mushrooms start out in white egg shapes that look a lot like edible puffball mushrooms. When foraging, Maya highly recommends slicing any puffball mushrooms in half to look for signs of a mushroom growing inside, like a stipe and cap, which could indicate it's actually an “egg” of a young western destroying angel.

Western destroying angel mushroom

Orange Jelly versus Witch’s butter

Orange jelly fungi can look alot like witch’s butter. While both are edible, by most accounts neither is terribly appealing once cooked and Maya advises against eating raw mushrooms. Raw mushrooms can have brown garden slug slime on them which can carry a disease, and all mushrooms contain chitin which–fun fact–gives them their rigidity just like insect and crustacean exoskeletons and can give us tummy troubles. Orange jellies are more orange and less “snotty” than witch’s butter but unless you have them side by side, the easiest way to tell them apart is by what they’re growing on. “A lot of mushroom identification is rotting log identification,” Maya laughs. This orange jelly spot (Dacrymyces chrysospermus) was found growing on a Douglas-fir which makes cones whereas witch’s butter (Tremella aurantia) is a parasitic fungus that grows on false turkey tail fungi on broad-leaved trees like oaks.

Orange spot jelly mushroom

Orange spot jelly mushroom

Witch's butter mushroom

False Turkey Tail
and Sudden Oak Death

Unlike turkey tail (Trametes versicolor), false turkey tail (Stereum hirsutum) never has the solid white pore surface underneath that turkey tail does. But of course, its not always so simple to identify. While false turkey tail is usually seen in fan shapes you might expect of turkey tails, they can also make crust-like formations. False turkey tail is the most common mushroom in the Santa Cruz mountains, Maya says. Unfortunately, each false turkey tail seen growing on an oak or tan oak tree is a sign that the tree might be infected with Sudden Oak Death, she explains. While false turkey tails decompose the wood of trees including those killed by the invasive, quick spreading disease, the number of trees dying adds to the amount of wood that can fuel the next wildfire to more damaging levels. Although Sudden Oak Death can increase the spread of fire, fire can decrease the spread of Sudden Oak Death. Maya says, “good fire dramatically reduces Sudden Oak Death.”

Fire can also support fungi that support the trees and the future.

False turkey tail mushrooms

High severity burn area at San Vicente Redwoods

Fungi and Fire

From the trail, Maya points out how much better the forest fared where techniques based on traditional tending practices like prescribed burns and shaded fuel breaks were done before the CZU Fire tore through San Vicente Redwoods in 2020. “Burning practices that care for the oak trees also tend the fungi under the trees that benefit the oaks too,” she explains.

Mycorrhizal fungi that create a network for exchanging nutrients and information among trees in the forest benefit from low intensity fires like prescribed and cultural burns. Low intensity fires recycle the nutrients from dead branches, leaves and plant material into the soil where their tree partners can access them. Burning off that debris also reduces fuel the next wildfire can burn to grow hotter, faster and more damaging to mycorrhizal fungi’s forest friends.

Less severe burn area at San Vicente Redwoods

Biscogniauxia

Upon first glance, you may think Biscogniauxia is wood charred in a fire, but it is actually a fungus that Maya has only seen post-fire. This possible fire mimicry may just be a coincidence, but to tell whether you are looking at burnt wood or a fungi working to break down wood after a fire, look closely for tiny dots which release spores.

“Fires break down nutrients in the summer, fungi break them down in the winter,” Maya explains.

Biscogniauxia fungi

Coltricia perennis mushrooms

Coltricia Perennis

Although much more could be learned about Coltricia perennis, sometimes called brown funnel polypore, it is known to have a preference for burned areas like San Vicente Redwoods. More than one fungi species currently uses the name Coltricia perennis but they are all different than most other small polypores. Coltricia perennis is ectomycorrhizal and forms helpful connections with coniferous trees in the redwood forest–especially pines–helping them to access nutrients and information rather than decay wood as many small polypores do.

Sulfur Tuft

Colorful sulfur tuft mushrooms (Hypholoma fasciculare) like these yellowish orange ones have been used for dye but Maya advises against using it for cooking. Sulfur tuft can cause what she politely calls “gastrointestinal discomfort”. Like other saprotrophic fungi, sulfur tuft has a crucial role in the forest. It mostly grows on Douglas-fir trees in the Santa Cruz mountains where it breaks down dead, woody debris and returns the nutrients to the soil. After the CZU Fire burned most of San Vicente Redwoods, there is lots of woody debris that would be beneficial to break down before it can become firewood for the next wildfire.

Sulfur tuft mushrooms

Fungi and the Future

The vast amount of woody debris that could fuel the next fire isn’t the only issue fungi can help with at San Vicente Redwoods. Maya shares that oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) are being studied at San Vicente Redwoods to see how they can help reduce further impacts from the CZU Fire on the environment. Oyster mushrooms are known for their ability to break many toxins down through their mycelium underground. By breaking down buried logs underground, Maya hopes oyster mushrooms can keep more of the carbon San Vicente’s trees had trapped out of the air. Near the creek, Maya hopes their mycelium, which act as underground sponges helping trees through droughts, can filter toxins from burned homes from washing into San Vicente Creek’s crucial habitat for endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout. Fungi can even break down organic materials in petroleum and are being utilized to help clean up oil spills. However, as fungi help clean the environment around them, heavy metals can concentrate in their mushrooms, so Maya advises not picking mushrooms near a gas station or a road.

Oyster mushrooms

More Mushrooms

Are you eager for more mushrooms?

Join Maya Under the Redwoods

Want to learn more about how fungi offer nature-based solutions for human impacts like floods, fires, and climate change? Join Maya Elson for a free Under the Redwoods webinar on February 27th from 1- 2 pm Pacific.

Take A Hike

You can follow in Maya and Orenda’s footsteps by taking the mâ-rŭs trail to Vista Point and hai-mĭn’ trail back when you visit San Vicente Redwoods to see if you can spot the mushrooms above.

A Few Guidelines

1. Please stay on the trail. Like tree roots, fungal mycelium networks underground can be damaged by our weight above ground.
2. Please do not forage. Foraging is not permitted at San Vicente Redwoods to protect fragile and recovering ecosystems that have already suffered many human impacts.
3. This is not intended to be a foraging guide, and Maya notes the challenges that similar looking fungi species can present even to mycologists in identifying. If you are interested in foraging, please consider reaching out to a professional guide. Maya leads fungi foraging hikes and mycology workshops with Mycopsychology Experiences.

Stay Tuned for Shrooms

Maya and her UC Santa Cruz students are beginning to survey fungi at San Vicente Redwoods. We look forward to finding out about more fungi species at San Vicente Redwoods from the class’ research visits. If you want to be the first to what about more fungi found on properties you help protect and care for, you can sign up for email here.

Fungi Photos

As Maya points out, mushrooms can be very difficult to identify from photos, even for experts. While we worked closely with mycologist and researcher Maya Elson in the field and on this guide to provide you with helpful tips to get to know mushrooms at San Vicente Redwoods, there are many fungi yet to be described by science and ever evolving species. If you think a mushroom above has been misidentified, let us know.

The post Fungi of the Forest: Meet the Mushrooms of San Vicente Redwoods appeared first on Sempervirens Fund.